The word “betting agent” means a person acting as agent for a bookmaker or for making bets between any two persons.
9. This Act may be cited as the Betting Act 1903, and shall be read with the Betting Acts 1853 and 1874.
Note.—Lord Davey has just introduced another Bill entitled “An Act for the Suppression of Betting in Streets and other Public Places” (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, ½d.). It is a very valuable measure, but has been confined for good reasons to offences coming under the title of Street Betting. In any further legislation it will be necessary to bring the advertisements of Betting Houses, the proprietors of which call themselves Commission Agents, whether British or Foreign, under such provisions as those of the Betting Act 1853 (section 7), as pointed out by the Lord Chief Justice.
III
SUMMARY OF LORDS’ COMMISSION
House of Lords Select Committee on Betting
Excerpts from Evidence
Witnesses: Mr. John Hawke, Honorary Secretary, National Anti-Gambling League, and Mr. G. H. Stutfield, Counsel for the Jockey Club, and for the Bookmakers and Street Bookmakers.
Mr. Hawke gave evidence as to the great increase during late years, especially in street betting at starting prices, and newspaper coupon betting; also as to betting at athletic sports and in public-houses; as to the bye-laws being passed by local authorities on street betting, and the enormous scale upon which coupons are carried on, one proprietor of an insignificant newspaper receiving between £2000 and £3000 a week in postal orders, etc., as acknowledged by himself in evidence. After his conviction his newspaper was advertising the business as continued from Holland.
Mr. Stutfield (Q. 299) said he believed that artisans of all ages and all classes, including women, put their small coins on horses through the street bookmakers.